5G – Making ‘Back to the Future’ a reality

Total Telecoms Congress – 30th/31st October

Total Telecom Congress was set up by the website/magazine –Total Telecom and covers a wide range of topics comprising Network Transformation, Data Driven Technologies, 5G and Customer and Corporate Transformation. Ric Reilly and Karl Bowater from our Business Development Team were amongst the 600+ people there. Karl and Ric having focused their time on the 5G side of the event, give their round up of some of the highlights.

5G – Connected Cars

London is one of the largest Western Europe City for volume of commuters, 31 million journeys are made on a daily basis. As such the focus from companies such as TfL (Transport for London), JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) is on driverless cars and automation.

“The information about the use of Smart Cities within London were especially interesting. I never would have believed that watching the likes of Back to the Future during my teens that this would become a reality……how wrong was I……….The belief is within the next 12 months we will see the first autonomous taxis available in South London. JLR are already producing cars that can communicate with each other, furthermore there is a possibility in the long term to ditch the traffic lights – as they won’t be required as cars will be communicating with each other!” – Karl

5G – What and How?

Discussions were held surrounding 5G Policy delivering for megacities and enterprise. This was ran by Mani Manimohan, Senior Director of Global Public Policy, GSMA. Speakers from O2 and Vodafone were also on the panel.

The continuing theme was the want to deploy 5G and truly develop smart cities, however the thought behind the utilization of the infrastructure was lacking.

“It was good to listen to a wider perspective on 5G and what’s in the future. But the questions what is 5G – when and where are still vague but there was a solid theme on how investors secure a rate of return and the need to combine network development with real-time analytics and AI in our everyday lives.” – Ric

Everyone on the panel agreed 5G and smart cities were all cost prohibitive. Which then led to questions such as – how do the operators monetise the capital expenditure? Examples that businesses out in European Cities have used include; utilising spectrum for Enterprise applications, and larger car manufacturers are utilising the technology for smart manufacturing.

“For me, the highlight of the day was the call for greater collaboration for the greater good, albeit while preserving a competitive environment.” – Ric